Advantages

Reliability

Disadvantages

Best 2.1 speaker, grab it when found!. Looking 2.1? Buy it:)

I connected this system to our Audigy 2 Platinum sound card and tested it using our test sound tracks ranging over different genres, DVD clips and game demos. Like its elder bro, the highs were excellent and higher mids were pretty decent too. However, the reproduction of lower mids was poor and lacked depth. Certain spectrums of low frequencies sounded a little muddled. The subwoofer gave an impression of being powerful, but the bass lacked tightness. As I like to put it, it had more of boom than thump. The subwoofer volume needs to be set around 60% to 70%. Anything beyond that invites a lot of distortion in sound. However, the master volume can easily be cranked up to 90% without any audible dip in quality. The system is pretty loud and good enough for a midsized room.

The performance in games was superb for a 2.1 channel system and there was nothing to complain about. In movies too it was more than satisfactory. One would miss the true surround effect, but that is something one is surely aware of when he opts for a 2.1 channel system.

The woofer lacks punch during high volume levels. Plus, i am using the set everyday, so my verdict holds the value! And regarding, the boom...imo the Bass is tight and thump but not that Boomy. Look, the words actually represent the sound itself. Boom comes from the woofer with loudness and more amplification. MMS430 has quite strange power distribution to satellites and woofer. 15W,15W to 2 satellites each and mere 20W to woofer. Thats why, the satellites sound aesthetically beautiful and way more sharper and clearer than VS4121 at any volume levels! And thus complements to woofer sound well. However, during volume levels more than 75%, woofer lacks depth.

RMS stands for "Root Mean Square". 50 RMS indicates the true power of the speaker amplifier, which is a fancy mathematical formulation for certifying the average amount of power an amplifier can continuously produce, no matter whats ur volume level is! Plus, the better is RMS rating, better are the speakers! Simple as it gets.

In performance Altec Lansing VS4121(ATP3), Logitech X230 are close competitors to Philips MMS430, But Philips MMS430 is best among them in every sense, It has got the maximum power (50watt).